Double Image

1

AS COLTRANE TWITCHED FROM A NIGHTMARE that was indistinguishable from the trauma of his wide-awake memories, he seemed to have been running forever. He fell from the impact of the bullet that shattered his camera, rolled desperately to avoid Ilkovic’s line of fire, and flinched as hands grabbed his shoulders, pushing him.

A moan escaped him. His eyes jerked open in a panic, the hands continuing to press him down, a gentle voice whispering, “Ssshh, it’s only me. It’s Jennifer.”

“Uh.” Sweat slicked him. His chest heaved.

“You’re home. You’re safe.”

“… Uh.”

“You were having a nightmare. I had to grab you before you rolled out of bed.”

Coltrane’s heart hammered so fast that he feared it would burst against his ribs. His tongue felt dry and thick. “… Jennifer?” In the shadows of what he now recognized was his bedroom, he peered up at her. Still disoriented, he seemed to see her through an imaginary viewfinder, framing her lovely oval face, her light blue eyes, and the dark worry behind them. His gaze lingered on her appealing curved lips, her smooth tan cheeks, and her short blond hair that resembled corn silk.

His heartbeat no longer made his chest feel swollen. At last, he seemed to be getting enough air. He eased back onto his pillow.

“Here.” Jennifer reached for a glass of water on the bedside table. Adjusting a straw, she placed it against his parched mouth. He took several deep swallows, luxuriating in the wonderful coolness, ignoring the drops that rolled down his chin.

“Guess I’m the last person you expected to see, huh?” Jennifer asked.

Coltrane didn’t know what to say. The last time he had seen her was six months ago when they had broken up.

“Daniel sent for me,” she said.

Coltrane nodded, the motion aggravating a headache. Daniel was a friend who lived in the town house next door.

“When you showed up at his place this morning, you really spooked him. He took care of you during the day, but he’s working nights at the hospital, and he needed somebody to watch you.” Jennifer smiled awkwardly. “He phoned me at the magazine.” She hesitated, then made a mock salute. “Nurse Nightingale reporting. Unless you can find somebody better, I guess you’re stuck with me.”

“I can’t think of anybody better.”

Jennifer’s smile was now filled with pleasure. “Can I get you anything? Daniel said I should give you Tylenol for your fever. And this antibiotic. Your wound’s a little infected.”

“Whatever the doctor ordered.” Coltrane swallowed the pills, then took several more sips of water. His body seemed to absorb the fluid instantly.

“How do you feel?” Jennifer asked.

Coltrane tilted his right hand from side to side, as if to say, Not so good.

“Daniel told me what you told him. There are a couple of blank parts. You can fill them in later. When you get your strength back. That’s all I want you to concentrate on – getting better.”

“Need…”

“Tell me.”

“The bathroom.”

“Put your arm around my shoulder. I’ll help you stand.”

When Jennifer pulled off the covers, Coltrane realized that he was wearing only boxer shorts and a T-shirt. His shirt hiked up, making him conscious of the bulk of the new bandage that Daniel had taped over the stitches on his side. There was dried blood below the bandage, scrapes on his stomach, and bruises on his legs.

Coltrane leaned on her.

“Can you manage by yourself?” Jennifer asked as they entered the bathroom. “Should I stay here with you?”

“I’m fine.” But Coltrane lost his footing, and Jennifer had to grab him.

He sank to the seat. “Not my best profile, I’m afraid.”

“Just do what you have to.”

“I’m okay. You can wait outside.”

“You’re sure?” Jennifer asked.

“Thanks.”

“As long as you’re certain you won’t fall on the floor.”

Coltrane nodded, watching her start to leave the bathroom. He whispered her name.

She looked back.

“I mean it,” he said. “Thanks.”

2

“I’VE BROUGHT TWO PRESENTS FOR YOU,” Jennifer said the next evening, “but the first one doesn’t count.”

Curious, Coltrane watched her bring her left hand from behind her back. She set down a copy of Southern California Magazine, a photograph of the windmill electrical generators outside Palm Springs on the cover. “The latest issue. I’ve made a lot of improvements. I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with it since…”

“I haven’t missed an issue.”

Her light blue eyes glittered.

“Even when I’ve been out of the country, I had it forwarded. It kept my memories warm on a lot of cold nights. If this is the gift that doesn’t matter, I can’t imagine what you’ve got behind your back in your other hand.”

Jennifer showed him a flat, stiff object, about eight by ten inches, gift-wrapped. She watched intently as he shook it.

“Doesn’t rattle. Feels like glass. I wonder what…”

She watched him pull open the wrapping. But the discomfort on Coltrane’s face at what he saw caused her anticipation to change to confusion. “Your third Newsweek cover,” she said. “It came out yesterday. I thought you’d like it framed.”

Coltrane somberly studied the stark black-and-white image of the backhoe dropping bones into the pulverizing machine while Dragan Ilkovic watched with satisfaction. “… Thanks.”

“You don’t sound as if you mean it.”

“It was very thoughtful of you.”

“Then why aren’t I convinced?”

The room filled with silence.

“What you told Daniel about how you got wounded,” Jennifer said. “I already knew some of it – from the CNN interview you did while you were in the hospital over there.”

“That’s why I snuck out of the hospital and caught the first plane back to here. After CNN tracked me down, I knew it wouldn’t be long before a lot of other journalists would be swarming around me. I had no idea the UN would release the photographs so quickly. I couldn’t bear talking about them.”

“You unplugged your phone.”

“It kept ringing. I couldn’t sleep. A half a dozen TV talk shows asked me to be a guest.”

“People think you’re a hero.”

“Please.” With distaste, Coltrane set the framed Newsweek cover aside. “I was lucky to survive.”

“You’ll get another Pulitzer Prize.”

“I hope not. Not for those photos. It didn’t take a genius to get those pictures, only a damned fool who was willing to lie in a hole in the ground for a day and a half.”

Jennifer looked baffled. “I’ve never heard you talk this way before.”

“Did the pictures make a difference? Was Ilkovic charged with war crimes and arrested?”

“He disappeared. Nobody knows where to find him.”

“Great.” The word sounded like a curse.

“They’ll get him.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t understand what’s happened to you,” Jennifer said. “You were always proud of scraping through tough spots.”

“I had a lot of chances to think while I was trying to get through the night without freezing to death. I got to wondering if I’d ever taken any photographs that made people feel glad to be alive because they’d seen my work. Maybe it’s time I became a real photographer.”

“But there isn’t anybody better.”

“I’m not a photographer. Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand, Weston, Adams, Berenice Abbott, Randolph Packard – they were photographers. They knew what a camera was for.”

A somber moment lengthened.

Jennifer interrupted it. “I brought some Chinese food. Do you think you could eat it if I go downstairs and bring you a plate?”

Instead of answering, Coltrane caught her by surprise. “How have you been, Jennifer?”

“Fine. Working hard. The magazine’s doing well.”

“But what about you? Are you doing well?”

“It’s been lonely.”

“Yes.”

She seemed to hold her breath.

“The same with me. I’ve missed you, Jennifer.”

Her eyes misted. She walked slowly toward him and knelt, her face level with his, stroking his beard-stubbled cheek. “I’m sorry. I needed too much from you. I think I smothered you. I’ll never act that way again.”

“It was my fault as much as yours.”

“No. I’ve changed. I promise.”

“We both have.” Ignoring the tightness in his side, Coltrane leaned forward and kissed her.

3

COMING EVENTS

Legendary photographer Randolph Packard will have a rare showing of his prints at the Sunset Gallery in Laguna Beach, from 5:00 to 7:00 P.M. on Friday, November 21. Packard, whose work documents the changes in Southern California, is generally considered to be one of the great innovators in modern photography. He was born in…

4

COLTRANE COULDN’T GET OVER IT. If he hadn’t opened the copy of Southern California Jennifer had given him, happening to scan its calendar section, he wouldn’t have known about Packard’s opening until it was too late. Even then, he barely had enough time, suddenly realizing that today was the twenty-first and that it was almost three. Fortunately, he had already mustered the strength to get out of bed and clean himself up. His sneakers, jeans, and denim shirt weren’t exactly what he would have chosen for what sounded like a formal reception, but he didn’t have time to change, only to grab a sport coat, a camera, and a copy of one of Packard’s collections, then get to his car.

The effort exhausted him, but he didn’t think twice about its worth. Leaving Los Angeles, driving south as fast as possible amid the smog-shrouded traffic on the San Diego Freeway, he felt as if he’d been told that someone had risen from the dead. Good God, how old would Packard be? In his nineties? The bulk of his work had been done in the twenties and the thirties. From then on, his output had dwindled, until, by the fifties, he had disappeared from public view. As the Southern California article had noted, paraphrasing a quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald, “For Randolph Packard, there wasn’t a second act.” But his first act had certainly been remarkable. The rumors about drugs and orgies, about his frequent unexplained trips to Mexico, had rippled through California’s artistic community and generated publicity for his work.

Not that Coltrane had needed the article to tell him any of this. When he had first been learning about photography, Randolph Packard had been one of his idols. He owned every Packard collection that had been published. His work had been deeply influenced by Packard’s theory that every effective photograph ought to tell the viewer something that merely looking at the subject of the photograph in its natural setting could not.

Packard’s famous portraits of silent-screen movie stars, for example: Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, Ramon Novarro, a lot of others, many of whom nobody would remember if Packard hadn’t immortalized them. Each portrait presented its subject in a splendor of light. But the actors didn’t radiate the light. Instead, they absorbed it. The brilliance was so intense, Packard seemed to think of them as literally being stars, but of a special sort, sucking up energy until, because of their egos and their frantic lifestyles, they would either burst or collapse upon themselves and be consumed.

Heading into the wall-to-wall cities that made up Orange County, Coltrane felt his anticipation swell. He was reminded of when the county had literally been covered with oranges, grove after grove of them, and how Packard’s classic sun-bright photograph of the area had depicted more oranges on the ground than in the trees, an abundance of ripeness on the verge of decay.

Packard had also photographed Laguna Beach, not the town (which had been only a few cottages back in the twenties and thirties) but the curve of sand along the ocean. That area of the Pacific Coast Highway was still as winding as it had been in Packard’s day, but now it had been overbuilt, the same as everywhere else in Southern California – gas stations, gift shops, and restaurants jammed next to one another. The crowded four-lane road felt like the narrow two-lane it had replaced. At dusk, in late November, the beach itself was almost deserted, cold waves crashing onto the sand. When Packard had photographed the area, he had made it seem an unoccupied paradise. But if the viewer looked closely at Packard’s most reproduced depiction of the beach, Horizon, 1929, the telltale imperfection, the poignant regret for time passing that was typical of Packard’s work, became evident: distant smoke belching from a passing freighter.

Coltrane managed to find a parking space on Forest Avenue across from the beach. He slung his Nikon single-lens reflex around his neck and took a deep breath, surveying the lights of art galleries along the tree-canopied street. When he reached back into his car to get his copy of Packard’s Reflections of the City of Angels, he suddenly felt light-headed and almost collapsed across the seat. His side in pain, he grabbed the steering wheel, took another deep breath, and straightened. Sweat chilled his face.

Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, he told himself. It’s a wonder I didn’t faint driving down here. I belong in bed, not getting crushed by strangers at a cocktail party.

No, he thought, feeling much older than his thirty-five years. I need to start over.

5

THE RECEPTION IN THE RUSTIC- LOOKING SUNSET GALLERY had spilled out onto the street. Coltrane stepped past trendily dressed couples wearing expensive jewelry, their makeup and hair perfect, and ignored the looks they gave his sneakers. The gallery was crammed with people who spoke with pseudo-British accents. Many of them had lips so tight, they seemed to have lockjaw. They sipped from flutes of champagne, but Coltrane had no interest in finding the bar. He heard music playing from hidden speakers, a CD of a string quartet, it sounded like, but he couldn’t be sure – the conversations were too loud. All he cared about were Packard’s photographs, and even before he worked his way through the crowd, it was obvious that the sheer number of them was astonishing.

Protecting his side, he struggled to the nearest wall of photographs and felt excitement build in him when he realized that he had never seen any of them before. Again and again, a card next to a photograph indicated that each was from Packard’s own collection. Their dates ranged from the fifties to the nineties, making clear that Packard hadn’t given up photography in his later years. He had simply chosen not to let the public see his work. Coltrane’s excitement changed to dismay when the force of the images hit him. This second act of Packard’s career emphasized the decay that he had only hinted at in his earlier work. Each photograph was devoted to blight – a dead seagull trapped in an oil spill, an emaciated child eating garbage, a brush fire destroying a spindly multimillion-dollar house perched ridiculously on a Los Angeles hilltop.

Repelled, Coltrane forced his way to another wall, oblivious to the annoyed looks people gave him as he shoved past. The next pictures were even more disturbing – policemen standing around a woman’s corpse in an alley, a caged pit bull snarling at children who taunted it with sticks, a man attacking another man during a riot. The black-and-white images had been printed to emphasize their shadows, the bleakness chilling. The only thing missing was a photograph of jumbled skeletons being clawed from the earth by a backhoe. Stumbling away, wanting nothing more than to leave, Coltrane felt the back of his legs bump against an upright metal circle with spindles and nearly toppled backward over it, catching his balance just in time, sensing with embarrassment that what he had struck was a wheelchair.

He quickly turned. “I’m very sorry. I didn’t…” His apology froze in his throat when he recognized the chair’s occupant.

Randolph Packard was wizened, but he still bore an uncanny resemblance to photographs that had been taken of him in his prime. Even in a wheelchair, he was tall, his thinness emphasizing his height. His trademark shock of hair over his forehead had receded, becoming wispy and white, but it was nonetheless recognizable. The hypnotic eyes were darker, the face narrower, the nose more bladelike. But despite being withered, with liver spots, his slack skin barely concealing his skull, he was unmistakably Packard.

“This chair’s taken, thank you.” Packard coughed, as if he had sand caught in his throat.

“I apologize. I should have looked where I was going,” Coltrane said. “Are you hurt?”

“The truth never hurts. Tell me what you think of my photographs.”

Coltrane was taken by surprise. “They’re, uh…”

“Indescribable, evidently.”

“… impressive.”

“You don’t make it sound like a compliment.”

Coltrane was determined to be tactful. “They’re technically perfect.”

“Technically?” Packard coughed more forcefully, still unable to get the sand from his throat. “That camera around your neck – is that a fashion statement? Don’t tell me you’re a photographer.”

“Yes.” Coltrane stiffened. “Yes, I’m a photographer.”

“Oh, well, then. Since you’re a photographer. What don’t you like about these photographs?”

Coltrane felt bile in his stomach. “They’re too bleak for my taste.”

“Is that a fact.”

“Actually, if you want to talk about facts, they’re ugly.”

“Ugly?”

“Coming here was important to me. I needed hope, not despair.”

Packard didn’t say anything for a moment, only steadied his wrinkle-rimmed eyes on Coltrane, then nodded. “Well, good for you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I asked for the truth. You’re the only person in this room who gave it to me. What are you holding there?”

“One of your collections.”

“You brought it for an autograph?”

“That was my intention.”

“But now you’re not sure.”

“That’s right.”

“And you’re really a photographer?”

Coltrane nodded.

“Then tell me something else that’s true. Why did you become a photographer?”

Coltrane turned to leave. “I won’t bother you any longer.”

“I asked you a question. Quick now. Don’t think about it. Answer me. Why did you-”

“To stop time.”

“Indeed?” Packard’s sunken eyes assessed him. “What’s your name?”

“Mitchell Coltrane.”

“Mitchell…” Packard’s gaze went inward, then focused on him more tightly. “Yes, I know your work.”

Coltrane couldn’t tell if that meant the same as stepping in dog shit.

“Tell me why you want to stop time,” Packard demanded.

“Things fall apart.”

“And the center cannot hold? I didn’t know anybody read Yeats anymore.”

“And people die.”

“How very true.” Packard coughed again, painfully.

At once, an effusive, colorfully dressed man burst from the crowd. “There you are, Randolph. I’ve been looking everywhere.” He was in his forties, overweight, with a flushed face, a salt-and-pepper mustache, and several thousand dollars’ worth of designer labels. “Some people came in you absolutely have to meet.” The man gripped the back of Packard’s wheelchair. “Excuse us. Coming through, everyone.”

“Just a moment.” Packard’s frail whisper carried amazing force. He motioned for Coltrane to step close. “This is my card. I’d like you to come for lunch tomorrow. One o’clock sharp. Bring the book. I’ll sign it then.”

And Packard was gone.

6

WELL, WHAT DID I EXPECT? Coltrane asked himself, struggling through the crowd to get out of the reception. There were many mysteries about Randolph Packard, but everything Coltrane had read about him was clear about one thing: his personality. Even to his most sympathetic biographer, Packard was haughty. His overbearing attitude was variously explained as the consequence of having been spoiled by wealthy parents whose fortune he had inherited at the age of sixteen after the parents died in a boating accident, or as the imperious manner of a genius whose sensibility was constantly being assaulted by those around him.

Whatever its cause, Coltrane had definitely had a taste of it. Angry, he escaped from the art gallery, so distracted by his emotions that he didn’t notice the change in the weather until he got to where he’d parked his Chevy Blazer near the intersection of Forest and the South Coast Highway. At almost six o’clock in late November, darkness was natural. But not this much darkness. A remnant of the sunset ought to have been visible on the ocean’s horizon; despite the glow from streetlights, stars should have started to glitter. But now the sky was absolutely black, and the horizon was indistinguishable from the ink that had become the ocean. A wind stung his cheeks, flinging sand from the beach. The first drops of rain pelted his windshield as he hurried to unlock his car and get in.

For about twenty minutes, as he headed north along the slippery, glistening 405 back to Los Angeles, the storm matched his mood. Then it seemed to cleanse him. Although the rain-slowed traffic would normally have made him impatient, he felt oddly content just to gaze past his flapping windshield wipers. He put on one of his favorite tapes and listened to Bobby Darin sing heartbreakingly “The Gal That Got Away.” As he admired Darin’s perfect phrasing, it occurred to him that almost no one had ever spoken favorably about Bobby Darin as a human being. Because of a heart condition, Darin had known that the odds were he wouldn’t live past his thirties. Feeling the pressure of limited time, he had so devoted himself to his career that no one else had mattered. Self-centered didn’t begin to describe him. Nor did cruel. Talent, it seemed, wasn’t any guarantee of noble character. Mulling over these issues, Coltrane made the obvious application to Randolph Packard: Maybe it’s not a good idea to meet one of your idols.

7

THROUGH THE STORM, Coltrane’s headlights revealed Jennifer’s red BMW parked at the curb in front of his town house. It troubled him. He had left a message at Jennifer’s office, telling her he wouldn’t be home. Why had she come over, regardless? Worried that their problems might be starting again, he pressed his remote-control garage opener, steered into the single stall, and shut off the engine. After hours of listening to the cacophony of rain drumming on his roof, he sat motionless, wearily enjoying the comparative silence. Then he pressed the remote control again and got out of the car. Despite the rumble of the descending garage door, he heard another door, the one at the top of the stairs. Kitchen light spilled down.

“Mitch?”

As Jennifer appeared above him, he saw her through an imaginary camera, its lens intensifying her. Nimbuslike, her blond hair seemed to radiate the light behind her. She wore gray slacks and a crewneck navy sweater. Her lips had a touch of pale orange lipstick.

“Are you all right?” She took several steps down toward him.

“Didn’t your assistant give you my message?”

“Message?” Jennifer looked confused. “No. I was away from the office all afternoon. By the time I had a chance to call in, my assistant was gone.”

Coltrane’s shoulders relaxed. It had just been a simple misunderstanding. It wasn’t going to be like before. He gripped the railing and climbed to her.

“I got worried when you weren’t here,” Jennifer said. “Then I finally noticed the open magazine on your kitchen table. When I saw the article in the calendar section, the time and date for the Packard exhibit, I figured out where you’d gone.”

“If you ever decide to get out of the magazine business, you’d make an awfully good detective.” Coltrane shut the kitchen door. “You wanted to know if I’m all right. No.” He stroked her hair and kissed her; her lipstick tasted of apricots. “I was a fool. I should have stayed home. With you.”

The compliment made Jennifer’s blue eyes seem as clear as the Caribbean when the sun emerges from behind a cloud. Then something else he had said registered on her, making her frown. “Why did you call yourself a fool?”

“Let’s just say meeting Randolph Packard wasn’t what I’d hoped it would be.”

“You have awfully high standards.”

Her remark puzzled him. “I’ve admired his work since I was old enough to tell a good photograph from a bad one.”

“Then I don’t know what more you could want. From everything I hear, things couldn’t have gone better.”

“Everything you hear?” Coltrane creased his brow.

“Packard phoned fifteen minutes ago.”

“What? You’re kidding me.”

“He got your number from the magazine photographers directory. He thought you’d be back by now. When I told him you weren’t, he talked about you. You made quite an impression on him.”

Coltrane felt a dizzying sense of unreality.

“He said he hasn’t met anybody as honest as you in a long time. What on earth did you say to him?”

Coltrane sank onto a kitchen chair. “Actually, I insulted him.”

Jennifer’s mouth hung open.

“I told him I thought his photographs at the exhibition were ugly.”

“You certainly know how to win friends and influence people.”

“Believe me, I wasn’t exaggerating about his photographs. They’re as ugly as the ones I’ve been taking.”

“And the ones you removed from your wall?”

Coltrane turned toward his living room. During the day, he had taken down all his framed photographs. His Time cover of an American soldier spooning food into a skeletal child’s mouth in Somalia, his two Newsweek covers (one of which showed a widow keening, holding her dead daughter in one arm and her dead husband in the other after a rocket attack in northern Israel), and his much-reprinted Associated Press photo of the first wave of American helicopters to invade Panama. These and other sensational highlights of his career were now stacked on a closet shelf. “It takes one shitty photographer to recognize another.”

“Maybe that’s why he wants to do a project with you,” Jennifer said.

Coltrane wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. “Do a project with…”

“He says he knows your work and thinks it’s impressive.”

“You’re making this up.”

“Not at all. But he says you’ll be putting in most of the effort. He’ll supply the advice and the original photographs for a photo essay in Southern California.”

“What are we talking about?”

“His famous series of L.A. houses in the twenties and thirties.”

Coltrane straightened. That series of twenty photographs was a masterpiece. Packard’s depiction of various styles of houses in widely separated areas of the not-yet-overgrown city not only had been hauntingly beautiful but had seemed to mourn the impending loss of the innocence it celebrated.

“Packard thinks they ought to be done again,” Jennifer said. “Go back to the same neighborhoods. Find the same spots where he set up his camera. Choose the same angles. Shoot what’s there now. He says he’s been thinking about a continuation of the series for a long time, but now he isn’t well enough to do it.”

“All he’s asking me to be is his assistant?”

“More. Even if he could take the photographs, he says he wouldn’t. He agrees with your opinion of his recent work – he can’t see beauty anymore. He’s hoping, if you take the photographs, the same places all these years later, maybe you’ll find the beauty he can’t find.”

“I’ll be damned.”

8

SOMETIME IN THE NIGHT, Coltrane woke to find himself reaching for her. His lips touched hers, but as he continued to roll onto his injured side, he winced from pain. “Lie still,” she whispered. “Let me do the work.” He felt her warmth when she leaned over him, kissing his neck. She trembled from the brush of his hands against her breasts. Floating. Flowing. Pain stopped. So did time.

9

“WE SHOULD NEVER HAVE SPLIT UP,” he said.

The bedside lamp was on. They had just returned from the bathroom. Naked, Jennifer sat next to him on the bed, her legs curled under her.

“I didn’t give you a choice,” she said.

His emerald eyes studied her. “I didn’t pay enough attention to you.”

She shook her head. “We both know the truth. I crowded you until you had to back off.” She looked at her hands. “There’s something I never told you.”

Coltrane frowned, wondering what she was getting at.

“This is hard for me to… I was married once.”

He turned his head in surprise.

“Ten years ago. I found out later he’d screwed my best friend the night before the wedding. That was after I found out he’d been screwing every woman he could all the time he was married to me, which wasn’t long, just under a year.”

“Why on earth didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s not something I’m comfortable talking about. All the story proves is that I’m a fool.”

“But why did he marry you if he didn’t intend to be faithful?”

“He said he loved me.” Jennifer’s tone was filled with self-mocking. “Lord knows, I loved him. I think being married to me gave him the chance to play the field and have an excuse why he couldn’t marry those other women. I was compliant enough to give him a home and make his meals and not pester him when he said he had to work late and wouldn’t be home.”

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

“Not as much as I was. The point is, I had a hard time trusting men after that. I kept suspecting that anybody who showed an interest in me was really trying to take advantage of me.” Jennifer bit her lip. “I guess that’s another way of saying I didn’t believe I could be special enough to any man that he’d never look at another woman. So…” She shrugged fatalistically. “I overcompensate. I wanted you to love me on an impossible level. But I swear that won’t happen again. Word of honor. I won’t make demands.”

“You should have told me about this before. It helps me understand a lot of things.”

“That’s why I’m telling you now. I lost you once, Mitch. I don’t want to lose you again.”

10

PACKARD’S ADDRESS WAS IN NEWPORT BEACH. Coltrane’s Thomas Guide led him to a Spanish-style mansion partially concealed by a high stucco wall. Both the wall and the house were pale pink, severely sun-faded, although the clouds from Friday night’s storm lingered, cloaking everything in gray. Driving through an open iron gate, Coltrane saw pools of water around cracks in the driveway’s blacktop. Shrubs needed trimming. Avocados rotted on the ground.

The overweight, colorfully dressed man who had wheeled Packard away at the reception answered the doorbell. He looked as if he’d had a hard night. His red sport coat matched the flush of his heavy cheeks. His gray-and-white mustache seemed to push down his mouth. He was holding a half-finished glass of what Coltrane assumed was a Bloody Mary. “I’m not convinced this is a good idea,” the man murmured.

Coltrane couldn’t tell if he meant drinking his lunch or inviting Coltrane in.

“The reception was very hard on him,” the man said.

“I wouldn’t have guessed. He seemed to be in fine form.”

“Because he was spirited? That’s when you know he feels most vulnerable.” The man shifted his Bloody Mary to his left hand and offered his right. The hand was cold from the ice in the glass he’d been holding. “Duncan Reynolds.”

“Mitch Coltrane.”

“I know. A word to the wise. Watch him carefully. I haven’t the faintest notion what he’s up to this time.”

When Coltrane frowned, Duncan frowned in return. “Something the matter?”

“I guess I’m not used to someone’s friend warning me about the other friend. At least not the first time we have a conversation.”

“Friend?” Duncan tucked in his chin, creating wrinkles in his puffy neck. “You think Randolph and I are friends? Good God, no. I’m his assistant. Chief cook and bottle washer. His private nurse.”

From somewhere in the house, a bell rang.

“I wouldn’t keep him waiting,” Duncan said.

Throughout this exchange, the front door had remained open. Now, when Duncan shut it and Coltrane followed him along a muffled corridor, he realized how dark the interior was. Dense draperies covered the windows in several indistinct rooms he passed. By comparison, the last room had muted recessed lights that seemed almost bright. The furniture was surprisingly sparse – a few padded chairs, a coffee table, and a sofa, all showing signs of wear. There was nothing on the walls. The draperies had been parted, but not the lace curtains behind them. Past a wall of windows, filtered gray daylight showed a strip of lawn littered with leaves. Beyond was a yacht moored at a dock, both looking in need of maintenance. Even the water seemed dingy.

Coltrane heard a subtle hissing sound. At first, he thought it came from a pump on a fish tank, but when he finished taking in the room and focused on Packard, who sat in his wheelchair next to a fireplace, Coltrane saw plastic prongs in the old man’s nostrils, connected to a tube that led to a small oxygen tank at the back of the wheelchair. Packard seemed to be drowning in a pair of green silk pajamas and a matching robe. His narrow face looked more shrunken than the previous evening, his eyes filmy, his white hair sparse, his skin mottled with brown. When he coughed, the sand that had seemed wedged in his throat at the reception no longer bothered him. His present problem was a lot of phlegm.

Coltrane looked discreetly away while the old man used a handkerchief. “Perhaps if I came back another time…”

“Nonsense,” Packard whispered hoarsely. “I asked you to lunch.”

Barely able to hear him, Coltrane stepped closer.

“I rarely invite anyone to the house.”

Now Coltrane was close enough that, if he wanted to, he could touch him. There was something oddly intimate about Packard’s forced whisper.

“And I certainly don’t go back on offers I make.” The old man cleared his throat with difficulty. “But I’m afraid my appetite isn’t what it should be.” The oxygen continued its subtle hiss. “No doubt something I ate at the reception last night. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t share the meal with you.”

“Since you’re not feeling well, why don’t we do this another time?”

“I won’t hear of it. Duncan, bring our young man something to eat. Is there anything you particularly enjoy?”

“A sandwich is fine. Whatever.”

“I was thinking of something a little more elaborate than a sandwich.” Packard cocked his wizened head. “If the Dom Pérignon is properly chilled, Duncan, would you bring it out now?”

Duncan saluted with his Bloody Mary and left.

11

THE ROOM BECAME SILENT, except for the hiss of oxygen. The contrast between this conversation and the one the previous evening was more striking. Coltrane decided that Packard not only had worn makeup at the reception but had been energized by some kind of drug. The drug must have put him on edge. That would explain why his present tone was so agreeably the opposite of the one he had used at the reception.

“I see you brought the collection for me to sign. Which one is it?”

“Reflections of the City of Angels.”

Packard sounded oddly sad. “That has always been my favorite. How on earth did you find a copy? It’s very rare. And very expensive.”

“I spent a lot of time haunting rare-book stores.”

“You certainly must have.” Packard took the oversized book and the fountain pen Coltrane offered him. When he opened the cover, he drew his spindly hand affectionately along a page. “I got older. This paper, the finest I could find, remains the same as when the book was printed in 1931. A lifetime ago.” With a nostalgic shake of his head, he uncapped the pen and managed the strength for a solid flourish of a signature.

“There.” He looked mischievous as he returned the pen and the book. “Now it’s even more rare and more expensive. While you’re holding that pen, I wonder if you’d return the favor and sign something for me.”

Coltrane didn’t understand. Baffled, he watched Packard reach into a pouch on the side of the chair and bring out a copy of Through a Lens Darkly, Coltrane’s only collection of photographs, images from war zones.

“You do know my work,” he said in amazement.

“A Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer has a way of attracting my attention,” Packard said. “You’re very good.”

“Thank you.” Coltrane’s voice thickened. “Coming from you, that means a great deal.” He managed to control his hand when he signed the book. “But I wish I’d devoted my career to something besides war and pain. I’ve been having a lot of second thoughts.”

“The day you’re satisfied with your work is the day you’ll stop being an excellent photographer,” Packard said.

The old man suddenly coughed.

The cough increased alarmingly.

“Is there anything I can…”

“No.” Packard strained to speak through the handkerchief pressed to his mouth.

Coltrane felt helpless, wanting to pat him on the back but afraid the old man was so frail that he might injure him.

At last, Packard straightened. “It’s this weather. The chill in the air. I shouldn’t have gone out last night.”

“Then why did you?” The abrupt voice was Duncan’s. He entered with an ice bucket, a champagne glass, a white towel, and the Dom Pérignon.

“To remind myself of how blind people are,” Packard said. “The only person who recognized the inferiority of my recent photographs is our young man here.”

“Or maybe everyone else was being polite.” Duncan popped the champagne open and poured the glass for Coltrane.

“That still makes Mr. Coltrane the only credible person at the reception.”

“Except me. I always tell you what I think.” Duncan set the bottle into the ice bucket, placing the towel next to it.

“And what are you thinking now?”

“That I’ll prepare lunch.” His lips barely revealing a smile, Duncan left.

Coltrane felt the champagne bubbles touch the tip of his nose when he sipped.

“I see you also brought…” Packard gestured toward the Nikon that hung from a strap on Coltrane’s shoulder. “‘To stop time,’ you said.”

The change of subject threw Coltrane off.

“I asked you why you became a photographer. That was your answer. Then you added, ‘Things fall apart… And people die.’”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Excuse me?”

“Who died?”

12

COLTRANE LOOKED AT THE FLOOR.

“My question makes you uncomfortable?”

“… Yes.”

“At my age, I find that it saves time” – Packard paused to catch his breath – “if I ask new acquaintances to tell me the most important thing I need to know about them.”

“A lot of people don’t like to be reminded of the most important thing about them,” Coltrane said.

The oxygen hissed.

“Was it a sister?”

The champagne suddenly had an acidic edge.

“A brother?”

Coltrane set down the glass. “My mother.”

“I see.”

“And my father.”

“When you were young? My own parents died when I was young. Not far from here. In a boating accident off Santa Catalina.”

“Yes, when you were sixteen.”

Packard didn’t seem surprised that Coltrane knew any detail of his life.

“My parents died when I was eleven,” Coltrane said, “although really both of them were dead a long time before – it just took several years to work it all out.”

Packard frowned.

“My father beat my mother.”

Packard didn’t move, didn’t speak. If he had reacted in any way, Coltrane would have ended the subject right there. But Packard seemed to sense Coltrane’s ambivalence. The old man’s presence was hypnotic. As the silence lengthened, except for the hiss of the oxygen, Coltrane found himself wanting to continue.

“My father didn’t beat my mother because he was a drunkard or because he was worried about his job or any of the other excuses you sometimes hear. I never saw him take a drink. He had his own successful business, a chain of dry-cleaning shops that kept expanding every year. Maybe it was work pressures I didn’t know anything about. Or maybe his father liked to beat his mother. Maybe that’s why he did it. Maybe he thought it was normal. For a while, I thought it was normal. I thought every kid’s father beat up…”

Coltrane felt taken back in time. He blinked, coming out of a trance, and picked up the champagne. Regardless of how much the acid of his memories tainted it, he took a long swallow. He felt an odd need to keep explaining, as if Packard, more than anyone else in the world, would understand.

“One night, after my father had given my mother an especially thorough work-over, he did something he’d never done before – he started on me. He knocked out one of my teeth. The next morning, he said he was really sorry and it wouldn’t happen again and I should tell my teacher I’d fallen off my bike and that was how my face got messed up and honest to God he would make it up to me for hurting me. Then he drove off to work. The minute his car disappeared around a corner, my mother rushed me upstairs and helped me throw clothes into two suitcases. Then she filled two suitcases of her own, and I remember all the while she was glancing frantically out the bedroom window, afraid that my father might drive back.”

Coltrane studied the bubbles in his champagne glass. They seemed to get larger. Again he was tugged back into the past. “She must have been planning it for a long time. She kept the garage door closed while she put the suitcases in her car – so the neighbors wouldn’t see. Then she and I drove to the bank. After that, she drove to a bus station and made me wait there with the bags while she left the car somewhere else – at a train station, she later told me, so my father would think that was how we’d gotten out of town. An hour later, she came back to the bus station, and for the next three years we were on the run, stopping in towns across the country, where my mother worked at any job she could find until she had enough money saved to keep running. I later reconstructed the route. From New Haven, Connecticut, to Trenton, New Jersey, to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to Youngstown, Ohio, to Sedalia, Missouri, to Boulder, Colorado, to Flagstaff, Arizona, and finally to Los Angeles.”

Very thirsty, he finished the glass of champagne and poured another. He might as well have been drinking water. “We kept changing our names. My mother told me she looked for cash-only jobs, like housekeeping, that didn’t force her to pay taxes and get her Social Security number recorded in a government computer. She told me if we didn’t leave a paper trail, if we didn’t try to get in touch with friends and relatives back home, my father wouldn’t be able to find us. I still don’t know how…” Emotion tightened Coltrane’s throat. “One afternoon after my mother picked me up from a library where she always told me to wait after school till she was done with work, we went to get an ice cream cone, just one – we couldn’t afford two. Then we took a bus to the trailer where we were living, and when we went in, we found my father sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, playing solitaire.

“As calm as I’d ever seen him, he got up, sighed, pulled out a gun, said, ‘Togetherness is next to godliness,’ and shot my mother in the face. Just like that. When my father made up his mind to do something, he was unstoppable. I felt as if somebody had slammed hands against my ears. The inside of my head was ringing, but somehow, I thought I heard my mother moan as she fell. Maybe I was the one moaning. I felt wet, sticky stuff all over my face. The next thing, my father pointed the gun at me. He gave me a funny little frown, looked at my mother’s body, looked at me again, shook his head, and blew his brains out.”

When Coltrane lifted his glass to his lips, he realized that it was empty once more. “They told me I didn’t speak for a year.”

13

COLTRANE BRACED HIMSELF TO CONTINUE. Packard’s intensely sympathetic gaze was eerily compelling, urging him on.

“After my grandparents flew to Los Angeles to get me, after they packed up the clothes and things that my mother and I had in the trailer, after they took care of the bills and arranged for the bodies to be transported back to Connecticut, after all the legal technicalities were out of the way and I went to live with them in New Haven, I couldn’t remember what my mother looked like. I used to spend hours at a stretch, hiding in the basement, trying to remember her face, but all that came to me was the image of her blood splattering when my father’s bullet hit her. I desperately wanted to remember her voice, but all I heard in my mind was the sound of the shot. That was my reality, not what was going on around me in my grandparents’ house. I must have eaten and slept, bathed and dressed and watched television and gone to school, but the images and sounds I actually experienced were in my memory.

“I had no idea of time passing. Eventually I found out it was a year later when I heard someone crying in a room above me while I hid in the cellar. A fog seemed to clear as I crawled from behind the furnace and made my way upstairs, following the sobs through the kitchen to the living room, discovering that they belonged to my grandmother. She was hunched forward on a chair, her face in her hands, sobbing so hard that tears dripped through her fingers and landed on the clear plastic sheets that protected photographs in an album lying open on the coffee table.

“I came around her chair and peered down at the photographs. One of them had been taken in blazing sunlight that made everything overbright and harsh. I recognized a swing, a slide, and a teeter-totter that someone had put up at the trailer park where my mother and I had lived. I recognized a trailer in the background. I studied a boy in the swing and a woman pushing him. I leaned closer, squinting at the woman’s long, windblown sand-colored hair, at her high, slender neck and delicate face, at her beaming smile. The woman wore a brown-and-white-checkered shirt with its sleeves rolled up and its bottom hanging over her jeans. The shirt and the jeans looked too big for her, emphasizing how delicately thin she was. Pushing that laughing child, she looked to be having the time of her life.

“Slowly, I became aware that the sobbing had stopped. When I turned, I saw that my grandmother had lowered her hands and was staring at me, her face raw from tears.

“‘That’s my mother,’ I said, the first time I’d spoken in a year. ‘That’s what she looks like. I remember now.’”

14

“SO YOU BECAME A PHOTOGRAPHER to try to preserve the past?” Packard asked.

“The present. That album, and others my grandparents had, showed my mother growing up and getting married. Then she was big with me. Then she was holding me and bathing me and raising me. Time was suspended. She existed on the page. Mercifully, I didn’t find any photos of my father. My grandmother told me that she had burned every image of him, cursing him all the while. He was dead. But not my mother. She was still alive in the photographs.

“But she was more perfect in some than in others. As I studied them endlessly, I became frustrated. Some of the photos were slightly blurred. Others had too much or too little light. Some were too close, others too far. Some didn’t emphasize what I absolutely needed to see, a glint in my mother’s eyes or what she was doing with her hands. I kept imagining better images. I kept praying that they could have been made better.”

“And the next step was to start learning about photography?”

“You’ve heard the stories about photographers who go to primitive regions, where the natives won’t let the photographers take pictures of them because the natives are afraid the cameras will steal their souls. I have no idea if those stories are true, but if they are, the natives are wrong. The camera doesn’t steal anything. It gives: immortality. That’s what I thought when I was a young man. I wanted to take photographs of everybody I met, to memorialize them with pity and love – because one day they were going to die. But not in my photographs. As long as my photographs existed, I thought, so did those people.”

“Wanted? Thought? You keep using the past tense.”

“Somewhere along the line, I went wrong. I started taking pictures that didn’t celebrate living but fixated on dying. I started documenting despair instead of hope.” Coltrane shook his head sharply. “No more. I want to glorify life.”

“Then by all means” – Packard coughed painfully – “I want you to photograph me.”

15

WHEN DUNCAN BROUGHT IN A TRAY of six different kinds of caviar, translucent eggs of gold, black, gray, brown, gray-green, and greenish black, Coltrane’s already-tentative appetite deserted him. Emotion on top of the champagne had soured his stomach. Increasingly, Packard (his eyes drooping, his whisper more filled with phlegm) didn’t have the strength to continue the conversation. So, after finalizing the details of their project, Coltrane said good-bye.

The afternoon light remained dismal. Driving back to Los Angeles, Coltrane struggled against an overwhelming exhaustion. He reached his apartment at 4:30 but still wasn’t hungry. In fact, he feared he was going to be sick. He lay on his leather sofa, tried to analyze what had just happened to him, and sank into an agitated sleep. At one point, the phone rang, but he was in too dark a place to answer or hear if anyone left a message.

16

“DID YOU PHONE ME LAST NIGHT?” Coltrane asked.

It was eleven Sunday morning. He sat with Jennifer on the narrow balcony of her condominium overlooking the harbor in Marina del Rey. The clouds continued to be gray. The breeze was cool; even wearing a sweater, Coltrane felt slightly shivery. But he couldn’t shake the sensation of being hungover and told himself that all he needed was fresh air to perk him up.

Jennifer shook her head. “We agreed you were going to find out how you managed on your own.”

“So you didn’t?”

Jennifer looked amused. “There was a time when I called you a little too often, remember?”

“I was just wondering. Last night while I was asleep, somebody phoned but didn’t leave a message. When I checked the machine this morning, its light was flashing. I had plenty of messages from earlier in the day – more reporters and TV talk shows wanting an interview about those Bosnia photographs. But then at the end, all I got was fifteen seconds of some kind of classical music and then click.”

“Wasn’t me,” Jennifer said.

Coltrane rubbed his forehead and fortified himself with a sip of steaming French-roast coffee. “A reporter wouldn’t have been shy about leaving a message.”

“You wonder if it was Packard?”

“The thought occurred to me.” Despite Coltrane’s sunglasses, the light seemed awfully intense. He squinted toward a sailboat, its motor chugging, as it made its way along the crowded harbor toward the exit from the marina.

“Maybe it’s my Virgo personality,” Jennifer said.

“What do you mean?”

“This is definitely a done deal, right? You and Packard are going to collaborate for the magazine?”

“Packard promised he’d FedEx you the prints and the signed permission forms tomorrow,” Coltrane said.

“But if it was Packard who phoned you last night, do you suppose he was planning to tell you he’d changed his mind? Maybe you should phone him today and confirm the arrangement.”

“And make him worry I’m going to be a nuisance?”

Jennifer chewed her lower lip. “Yeah, sometimes I don’t know when to leave well enough alone.”

17

CLIMBING THE STAIRS FROM HIS GARAGE, entering his kitchen, Coltrane heard a voice call his name. About to continue up to his darkroom on the second floor, he tensed, immediately changed direction, and stared into the living room.

The front door was open, light streaming in from the patio. A red-haired man was setting a large cardboard box next to another one. Like Coltrane, he was in his mid-thirties. His thinning hair emphasized the fullness of his face. His pale skin contrasted with his freckles.

“Just in time,” the man said. “I signed for these boxes and brought them in for you.”

“Daniel.” Coltrane grinned. “I’ve been wanting to call you, but I know you’re working nights in the emergency ward. I didn’t want to wake you during the day.”

“I appreciate the thought. This week’s been rough.”

“I guess I didn’t make it any better when I hammered on your door Wednesday morning.”

“It’s a good thing you did. Your stitches needed a little maintenance. How are they?”

“Fine.”

“Seeing’s believing. Up with the sweater and the shirt.”

Coltrane sighed and did what he was told.

“Not bad.” Daniel bent, peering closely. “The antibiotic I prescribed must be working. You had the start of an infection, but the redness around the edges has almost disappeared now. How’s your fever?”

“Gone.”

“You’ve got a hell of a constitution, my friend. I doubt I’d have lived through what you did.”

Coltrane shrugged.

“Make sure you finish the antibiotics. Keep drinking plenty of fluids. In a couple of days, I’ll take out the stitches.”

“Daniel” – Coltrane put a wealth of meaning into the next word – “thanks.”

“It’s nothing.”

“No, it’s very definitely something. You’re always there when it counts.”

“What did you expect me to do – tell you to go away, that I’d just gotten home from the hospital and I needed to sleep?”

“You’re a friend.”

“I hope you didn’t mind my bringing in Jennifer. I couldn’t think of anybody else I could count on to help.”

“Mind? Not at all. Things are working out great.”

“Admit it – you missed having her around. The three of us had a lot of good times. If Jennifer tried too hard, it’s because she cared.”

“Or I didn’t try hard enough.” Coltrane changed the subject. “Tell me about these boxes.”

“A man from a limousine service was camped outside your door. I noticed him when I was going out for some much-needed exercise.” Daniel patted the slight protrusion at the belly of his blue jogging suit. “The boxes must have gold in them or something – they certainly weigh enough. The delivery guy was reluctant to let me sign for them. He only agreed when he saw I had a key to your town house.”

“A delivery on Sunday?”

“The driver said the man who sent them was very insistent.”

“There isn’t a label. Did the driver say who-”

“Randolph Packard.”

“Packard?”

“Why should that name mean something to me?”

Coltrane quickly explained as he opened one of the large boxes. Inside, an envelope lay on top of a generous amount of bubble wrap. He broke the seal, finding a handwritten card.

I trust you know what to do with this.

Baffled, Coltrane pulled away the bubble wrap, his bewilderment changing to amazement when he discovered a tripod and a foot-square black box whose front and back were connected by bellows.

“What is it?” Daniel asked.

“A camera.”

“I’ve never seen any camera that looks like a miniature accordion.”

“It’s called a view camera.” Realizing the significance of what he was holding, Coltrane felt awestruck. “These days, only studio photographers use them, but in the old days, in Packard’s prime, it was the standard for every serious photographer. Packard would have taken one with him everywhere.”

“How come it looks so weird?”

“I guess you don’t know anything about f-stops and shutter speeds,” Coltrane said.

“Thank God. Just give me my ‘point and shoot’ Kodak and I’m a happy camper.”

“Right.” Coltrane chuckled. “You can’t imagine what it was like to take pictures when a camera didn’t come equipped with a built-in light meter and automatic focus and all the rest of the bells and whistles.”

“Progress.”

“Maybe, but don’t you sometimes get frustrated with the pictures those automatic cameras take? They often look overexposed. There’s no texture to the image. The colors are harsh.”

“They’re good enough for snapshots.”

“But if you want a first-rate photograph, you have to go a different route. You need to use a meter to judge the light as accurately as you can. Then you need to adjust the lens opening and the shutter speed so the correct amount of light strikes the negative. This view camera has precise controls that allow you to do that. Its focusing is just as precise. You expand or contract these bellows, like an accordion, pulling the lens closer or farther away from the view plate at the back, until the image is perfectly crisp. A camera this large takes an eight-by-ten negative. You can print the image as an eight-by-ten transfer, with none of the graininess you get when you enlarge an image from a dinky thirty-five-millimeter negative. You get an image so sharp and clear, you won’t be able to tolerate snapshots from an automatic camera.”

“Looks awkward.”

“Worse than you think. Hold this while I pull the tripod from the box.” Coltrane expanded the tripod’s legs and locked them, then secured the camera to the tripod. He draped a black cloth over the back. “Now stoop under there and look at the viewing screen.”

Daniel did so, then quickly reappeared from the cloth, rubbing his eyes in discomfort. “Everything’s upside down.”

“And reversed,” Coltrane said. “The photographer has to imagine the way the image would look normally. Not only that – the camera’s heavy. It uses negatives protected by a lightproof holder, two negatives to a holder, so if you want to take a hundred exposures, you need fifty holders, and they’re heavy. And then, of course, you need various filters and lenses, which you have to carry with you, and which, I assume, are in the other box. Taking a view camera on a photo assignment can be like going on a safari.”

“You’re sure it’s worth it?”

“Right now, I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Coltrane stared reverentially at the camera. “Look at the scratches on it. Old.” He studied the manufacturer’s name imprinted on the metal rim at the back. “Korona. I’m not sure that company’s still in business.”

Numbed, Coltrane sank onto the sofa, struck by the implications. This must be the same camera that Packard used to photograph his famous series of L.A. houses, he thought. In a way he had never imagined, this assignment to recreate that series was going to be an education. He had known that he would be literally following Packard’s footsteps: doing his best to find where Packard had placed his camera, trying to reproduce the same camera angles. But Coltrane had assumed that he would use contemporary cameras. Now he understood that modern equipment would skew the experiment, drawing more attention to how photography had changed than to how the city had changed since the twenties. The further implication was that by wanting Coltrane to use the same camera he had, Packard was telling him to do everything possible to try to identify with Packard, to pretend to be Packard. Only then would Coltrane understand the decisions Packard had made when photographing those houses.

The phone rang.

Maybe it’s the old man, Coltrane thought. “Hello?”

“You’ll never guess what a messenger just delivered,” Jennifer said excitedly. “The prints and the signed permission forms. This is very definitely a done deal.”

“And you’ll never guess what a messenger just delivered to me. The view camera Packard used.”

“What?”

“Get over here. You’ve got to see this camera.”

18

“HELLO.” Duncan’s voice sounded thick, as if he’d been drinking.

“It’s Mitch Coltrane.”

No response. Coltrane pressed the phone harder to his ear, wondering if there was something wrong with the connection. “Duncan?”

“This is about the camera?”

“I can’t get over how generous he’s being. Is this a good time to talk to him? I’d like to thank him and swear he’ll get everything back in perfect condition.”

“No, I’m afraid this isn’t a good time.”

“Then I’ll call back. When do you think he might be feeling-”

“Randolph died two hours ago.”

A chill started at Coltrane’s feet and went all the way to his scalp. “No. How… Yesterday…”

“He put up a good front. His breathing got worse around three this morning. Even with the oxygen at its highest setting, he still had to fight for air.”

“Jesus.”

“I phoned for his doctor, but Randolph left strict instructions that he didn’t want to go to a hospital. All we could do was make him comfortable. By early afternoon, he was finally at peace.”

“The camera.” Coltrane had difficulty getting his voice to work. “When did…”

“We discussed it last evening. That’s also when he signed the photo-permission forms, which I assume your editor has by now, along with the prints. The project can go forward as planned. For some reason, Randolph thought it important that someone retrace his steps.”

“I won’t let him down.”

“He didn’t think you would. You’d be surprised how close he was beginning to feel toward you. ‘A fellow orphan’ is how he described you. I want to be sure you understand. Randolph found it almost impossible to speak near the end, but he managed an amazing effort to make me promise to tell you.”

“Tell me?”

“The camera is yours.”

“… What?”

“It’s not a loan. It’s a gift. I guess you could call it an inheritance.”

19

SO, WEIGHED DOWN WITH GRIEF, Coltrane brought Packard back to life. He couldn’t help thinking that way as he worked in the darkroom, a faint amber safelight over his head. Jennifer stood next to him, watching somberly as he used tongs to slide a sheet of photographic paper into a tray of developing solution. He stirred the solution. Briefly, the sheet remained blank. Then the magic took place, an image coming to life on the paper, a black-and-white picture of the old man gazing up.

Jennifer wasn’t able to speak for a moment. “It’s fabulous.”

Sorrow negated any tone of satisfaction that Coltrane might have felt. The odor of chemicals was bitter. “I took a dozen exposures, but this is the one I knew I wanted.”

The image showed Packard looking shrunken in his pajamas and his housecoat, sitting in his wheelchair, the fireplace in the background. The aperture setting Coltrane had used had allowed him to keep that background in focus, specifically part of a burnt-out log in the hearth, the kind of symbolic detail that Packard had liked to use in his early work.

“His eyes,” Jennifer said.

Coltrane nodded. “The expression in them constantly changed – from arrogance to impatience to irony to amusement to calculation. But this particular expression was the one I wanted. Earlier, when he’d looked at the collection of his photos I brought for him to autograph, his eyes became sad. There wasn’t a hint of pride in his reaction to what he’d created. Instead, the only thing the photographs seemed to do was remind him of the passage of time.”

“Did you have any trouble getting him to hold the book in his lap?”

“Not at all. He told me, ‘I surrender myself.’”

“So now we have a photograph of a fragile old man who happens to be a genius, inspecting the contents of one of his books. A photograph about a photographer and his photographs.”

Coltrane’s voice was filled with melancholy. “His photos stayed the same, but he got older.”

“But now he stays the same in this photo.”

“I wonder what it’ll feel like, going where Packard did, doing what he did, trying to be him.”